Does anyone else just…not care? Files is a system app like Windows Explorer. It’s not meant to “compete” with anything. Does anyone think Control Panel competes with Android’s Settings app?
iCloud Drive is a cloud storage competitor that Files works well with, but Files also supports Dropbox and Google Drive and many other storage competitors (anyone who wants to implement the API gets to be in Files). Also, the argument that Files is somehow replacing Dropbox doesn’t even make sense because you need to have the Dropbox app installed in order to connect Files to Dropbox. It’s not a standalone integration, it depends on third party apps providing the correct extension to work correctly.
It’s surprising, to me at least, that everyone accepted Files coming packaged with every new iPhone and iPad sold, but for some reason its position in the App Store is a controversial topic? How many people even delete Files and search for it again? Not to mention that installing system apps from the App Store doesn’t even install anything, because the app was never removed, just hidden from Springboard.
>Files is a system app like Windows Explorer. It’s not meant to “compete” with anything.
That defence helped Internet Explorer a lot. Nope. At the very least searching for 'dropbox' should return 'dropbox' and not be overriden by Apple.
>but for some reason its position in the App Store is a controversial topic? How many people even delete Files and search for it again?
This makes Apple's defence for manually placing Files at #1 even more nonsensical.
>iCloud Drive is a cloud storage competitor that Files works well with, but Files also supports Dropbox and Google Drive and many other storage competitors...
If all users installed DropBox, iCloud Drive would get $0. If they used Files, some percentage of users would pay for Apple's solution. That the financial benefit doesn't get 100 percent of users does not make it not a financial benefit.
>That defense helped Internet Explorer a lot.
The past tense implies that battle was already won. Afaik, Windows still uses anti-competetive practices to support Edge (not uninstallable, and 'are you sure you want to change your default browser? Check out the New Edge first!'). The same defense still applies if they want it. I don't think it's right to speak about it like it's a thing of the past.